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Taming the multiverse

14 July 2001

By Marcus Chown

FLICKING through New Scientist, you stop at this page, think “that’s
interesting” and read these words. Another you thinks “what nonsense”, and moves
on. Yet another lets out a cry, keels over and dies.

Is this an insane vision? Not according to David Deutsch of the University of
Oxford. Deutsch believes that our Universe is part of the multiverse, a domain
of parallel universes that comprises ultimate reality.

Until now, the multiverse was a hazy, ill-defined concept—little more
than a philosophical trick. But in a paper yet to be published, Deutsch has
worked out the structure of the multiverse. With it, he claims, he has answered
the last criticism of the sceptics. “For 70 years physicists have been hiding
from it, but they can hide no longer.” If he’s right, the multiverse is no
trick. It is real. So real that we can mould the fate of the universes and
exploit them.

Why believe in something so extraordinary? Because it can explain one of the
greatest mysteries of modern science: why the world of atoms behaves so very
differently from the everyday world of trees and tables.

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The theory that describes atoms and their constituents is quantum mechanics.
It is hugely successful. It has led to computers, lasers and nuclear reactors,
and it tells us why the Sun shines and why the ground beneath our feet is solid.
But quantum theory also tells us something very disturbing about atoms and their
like: they can be in many places at once. This isn’t just a crazy
theory—it has …